The folks who crafted the classic Diablo series are back as Flagship Studios has unleashed the next phase of RPG gaming with HellGate: London.
The game is a mix of first person shooters, classic RPG gaming, and offers gamers unlimited replay value in the ever changing gaming world for which it is based.
The game is set in London following an apocalypse where demons have overrun the city leaving most of the beautiful city a scarred wasteland. What remains of humanity has taken up refuge in the underground system and travels to various locales in the city by means of a gate system.
It is no surprise that these sole survivors come from three of society’s most elite factions, each of whom are masters of a robust number of skills and weapons essential to demon-thrashing.
Thankfully the secret society of The Templars has provided weapons, armor, and artifacts to help battle the hordes.
There are also The Cabalists who study Dark arts and walk the line between good and evil as well as Hunters which are ex-military who use an awesome array of weapons to lay waste to the bad guys.
can still get the best performance on older PCs.
To say the game is vast would be an understatement as the incredibly large maps and countless missions as well as the three main classes to play the game in make HellGate: London a truly massive game.
There is alarge amount of micromanagement as players must learn weapons, upgrades, new abilities, and more as they battle, and with an online mode that allows players to play co-op you can see how this is truly an ever changing world. To add to this, a subscription service for the game exists which offers new content, items, and more and may someday evolve into an MMOPG style game.
The graphics in the game are solid and truly shine for high-end systems that can handle Direct X 10 graphics. For those not blessed with the latest hardware, the game does play fine on older systems and anyone who is using the Vista operating system should not have any trouble with the game.
I enjoyed playing the game from the 3D shooter perspective and loved that with a flick of the mouse wheel, I could move to third person during my battles with the hordes.
My biggest frustration was with the learning curve of the game as it was a bit of a chore learning the mapping, interfaces, and items included in the game. Also, I was hoping that the game would have allow me to pickup items automatically as on more than one instance, I was frustrated trying to pick up an item during a firefight, which required me to stop over the desired object and hit a key.
In the end, HellGate: London is a very ambitious title that offers plenty for the money and countless hours of entertainment but I think will appeal mainly to the hardcore RPG fans as casual RPG fans mine be a bit overloaded by the game.
3.5 stars out of 5.
